mangled media serves up its heaping portion of bullshit to all those willing to listen.
some of us unwilling to listen but at the same time held hostage to the same vices that plague the modern mind like dyslexia.
random letters and bastardized images of beauty on every cover of the magazines mar the racks.
I am immune to my own brand of tunnel vision.
I filter out what I do not wish to see.
but what of the others?
what do they see springing out of these miscontrived images of what humanity is destined to look like thirty years from now?
put on the blinders to keep out the infectious thoughts?
unity as discord in mass appeal to represent one race yet try not come across as being racist?
look up to the stars – we make our own galaxies out of our cities – I wonder what those looking down on us think of all these abnormal pulses that stream off our planet?
booze for breakfast on a Monday morning, I just can’t seem to find the meaning to getting up so damn early.
I am frozen in the depths of a deep sleep.
vision is blurry.
sense of direction is not so keen.
wander about in a state of confusion looking for the door to go outside.
there are too many halls and flights of stairs that span the depths of my mind.
I am still asleep.
I may be dreaming but you, reading this, are not.
I hope so anyways.
often I wonder if perhaps I am caught in somebody’s dream. what if they wake up suddenly and I disappear into a cloud of smoke and drift off into the atmosphere.
what if…
what if…
always with the what ifs; I just can’t help myself – always weaving fiction out of circumstance and then standing back lost in a dream watching it all conspire.
I hang onto the thin curtains that protect my eyes from the harsh lights of thundering humanity.
I hear its collective voice.
I cringe at the smell of its hideous by-products.
I laugh at the misery, because, in all honesty, I just don’t care about anything.
alone.
alone.
what if I am alone?
what if all that spreads out around me like a gigantic rat maze is just that?
an experiment?
a delusion?
a metaphor which I use to represent all that I wish not to see?
I could be lost in an eternal sleep – a coma that encompasses me like fog and obscures any chance of waking.
I could be dead; perhaps I am a ghost; a spectre of what could have once been human.
but I feel the room around me – its pressure, its odour, its temperature – it circles me as a swarm of flies would.
I hear its breath.
I answer its physical call.
I am just as prone to the curse of gravity as all.
egocentric, maladjusted, yearning for an end to all this diversion that is fanning the flames of delusion, she sits with arms crossed, thinking – always thinking.
there is no end to all this confusion; plugged into wires that are smoking and burning.
fear that captures in its fiery grasp – screams haunt the space around the buildings like insects herding down highways.
add irony to the mix like a slab of bloody meat, hunger can wait until public attention shifts to whoever gets the mayor’s seat.
finding reasons to forget about the poor, it’s always easier to close your eyes than look starvation in the eyes.
women, who are fragrant as flowers, noxious as poison gas, stream down the avenues in fashionable pants. hearing the familiar clack of stylish shoes I can’t help but wonder – parades of feet wandering the corridors of my mind.
imagining songs that will never be made because the image is so illusory, it becomes difficult to replicate.
there is trouble with the translation because the source of words is tiring. hands want to wander but the mind always remains focussed.
waiting in line I stand, patience intact, wordlessly understanding. it’s difficult stand around without resorting to hopping and skipping.
attention spans are frail as dying leaves in the wind, tumbling to the sidewalks like parking tickets raining down on waiting masses.
there is now a fee to breathe the air.
there is now a tree for every person on which to rest their head.
dreams of nature and beautiful sunsets, man was intended for beauty and not all this pointless mind/bloodshed.
dreamers dying on malnourished thoughts; there never seems to be enough imagination in pop-culture now.
perhaps I am older and see things differently: but what should age matter – it’s just a countdown to expiry.
life takes time to simmer down to perfection, much like making a good pot of soup.
ideas need time to take root and inspire new wonder.
the world can be full of wonder, that is, if you know the proper places to look.
to find what matters, one must be curious – willing to lift the rocks that life throws at you and see if anything worthwhile is hiding under them.
and then I turn my attention to words previously spoken, analyzing the metaphors to see if I can extract anything further out of them.
unsure of what the ancient rhymes really mean, there is no author alive today to fully explain. I can’t help but wonder if it really does matter what the words actually mean – is it that you are just supposed to derive your own perception of the truth contained within?
fragments of sanity strewn about my mind.
I wish I remembered what it was like to live and not question everything that meets my eyes.
the fantastic is the likely reality.
through obscured eyes though, anything can resembled harmony.
but my ears are unclouded and through them I hear the truth. the discord may fog up the meaning but I’ll always listen for the prose.
there is beauty contained in every flower, every drop of rain, and every flake of snow. there is an essence of life-giving nutrients in even the stones that we throw.
I wish to walk on water.
illusion is far more potent than actuality; I spin my webs with words. sometimes I feel like a spider floating in the breeze, carrying me far from my home to distant and wonderful lands.
I hold onto a thin rope that connects me to what I am supposed to do.
my tasks are numerous and tedious; I hold my breath and count to two.
I can imagine what it would be like to be alone in the world after everybody else disappears into tomorrow’s promising rays; I can imagine what it would be like to walk on the deserted, newspaper-strewn streets. I shall run when that day comes. I shall find what lurks at the end of the road that vanishes into the horizon.
today I sit here.
tomorrow I may be in the same place.
the rainbow disappears into the smog of the city while forgotten clowns fight in back-alley barroom brawls. signs only offer words of misdirection; I couldn’t tell you where to find a payphone that worked if your very life depended on it. the street signals are misleading because they turn green at the same time; there is chaos with the flow of traffic but there isn’t even a super-villain anywhere to be blamed. pure and simple uncoordination of the people in charge of the lights, bicycles veer haphazardly through the mish-mash of cars and delivery trucks that honk and scream at each other like banshees on cold Irish nights. standing on the street corner, I am watching all that conspires with apathetic eyes. I wish I could just cross this street to continue my strive for the neon-lit path that seems to never cease. the city spreads out in front of me like marmalade. the colours are blended into a wonderful looking gooey consistency ready for me to reach out and eat them. but I am stranded on this island of a street corner, watching in horror at the traffic that groans like a boar with indigestion. I sample bits of reality here, listening to snags of other’s conversations realizing that frustration is universal and perhaps I’m not so far off from being human. but I turn and look over my shoulder, wondering if what I see as a fuzzy misshapen reality is true to the concept of realism, and I close my eyes again because it’s easier to wonder what life would be like in a different dimension.
what if…
what if…
I can’t stand the suspense of living in a world where the only way to awake one another is with a nasty electronic beeping jerk. waking to the harsh lights and stench of air pollution, people are standing in their respective proper places. the scene is unfolding now – I can see the plots beginning to take shape. one man standing with a newspaper is plotting ways to run zigzag through the accursed street. a lady with a short skirt and boots up to her knees taps her foot with impatience, rummaging through her phone like she actually has someplace to be. old people bent over their canes wondering what is going on, always patient enough not to make too many assumptions based on the number of hydro-poles. the lady with children scampering around her legs – she curses and swears under her breath, lost in the glimmer of traffic, waiting to get her kids home to bed. people with shopping bags, heavy and almost ready to break under the strain, juggling items from one hand to the next, balancing a melon on a pizza like a waiter serving a fancy cake.
looking up at the yawning gap between the buildings, I catch a glimpse of the brown night sky. billboards decorate the buildings like creeping mildew. LED lights twinkle and advertise in high windows of distant buildings.
I am taken in by all the lights and sounds and personal dramas that surround me like a pool of society’s worries. I am drawn in deeper into the depths of the night. intrigue stands on the very foundations of matter and procrastination is no longer a crime. I can’t wait for tomorrow to reach the end of this journey; but I know I must because the only way I can head is back home tonight. the streets are flooded with human traffic like a surge of tide. the din is so loud that I need to wear my headphones to survive. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live in a world devoid of my own personalized soundtrack. little wires extend from the ears of all that music holds in its grasp. a slave to the rhythm, everybody is carrying their own beat. feet shuffle to different patterns, some stepping, some tripping, some simply walking on angles that seem inconceivable for the pressure of gravity.
I am holding my pace, weaving through people as if I were in a maze. the sidewalk can be like a highway, everybody walking at a different speed. curse at the people who walk too slowly – sometimes I wonder if they are related to snails leaving behind a trail of litter like slime to tell others from whence they came.
it seems as though I’m racing against time to reach my destination. but I have no specific place to be, no time by which I need to be anywhere. I am at leisure, yet the pace of the city tends to get me down. it’s hard to find peace in a place that thrives on tumultuous confusion.
what if… what if I retire into a vegetative state to wait out this cold weather? my feet are cold as ice; my hands like burnt out embers. I need a tactical retreat under a nice and warm blanket.
I close my eyes and let the buildings spring up like flowers, the people like ants. my mind is populated by all the paths I have wandered on starry moon-lit nights. I can still smell the electricity in the air from storms many summers passed. I can still taste the dew on my lips from fresh strawberries in endless fields when I was seven or eight. I can imagine what one day it will be like to explore new cities, feel foreign breezes in my hair.
but still I always ask myself what if, what if…

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